Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, August 28, 1995                   TAG: 9508280105
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL - AND SLIMY - ARE BLESSED

One by one, they went to the altar - a snail, a sunflower-seed eating guinea pig, a Rhodesian Ridgeback - where these words were uttered by the Rev. Kirk Ballin:

"Thank you for the gift of life and love you bring to us."

Just as St. Francis of Assisi might have done 800 years ago, a Roanoke congregation blessed its pets Sunday.

Appropriately, it rained, enhancing the symbolism of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Roanoke as an ark in which animals can find comfort from the ravages of the world.

Aside from one accident involving a Labrador retriever mix and its embarrassed owner, the service for about 30 pets went off without a hitch - or broken leash.

Snail owner Megan Smith, 10, spoke afterward of her burdens in raising the gastropod, Alex, who traveled to the service in his glass bowl. The 11/2-inch creature from a school project survived bouts of dehydration this summer. But the onset of cool weather poses a new concern; a classmate's snail is dead and gone.

"I'm kind of worried," Megan said as the thing oozed horizontally toward nowhere certain.

The guinea pig and Ridgeback dog were among the other unusual members of the otherwise standard assortment of household animals present.

Congregation member Jane Harrison said she has four cats, one of which underwent the blessing service during its first staging last year. Although that cat had a history of health problems beforehand, including a nip from a snake that punched out a third nostril, the cat has been illness- and injury-free in the year since, she said. She brought a second cat this year.

"Animals are a part of nature, and we need to be in harmony with nature," opined congregation member Kaye Johnson, owner of a poodle and a terrier mix.

Ballin's own cat was a stray that followed him to church one Sunday. He is still getting over its recent death, but seemed upbeat after rubbing flower-scented holy water on the animals.

St. Francis is credited with originating mankind's concern for animals, said congregation member Betty Wilson, who helped plan the blessing. The modern animal blessing acknowledges that those animals made into pets soothe us but get little thanks, Ballin told the congregation.

Offering-basket contributions at Sunday's service were limited strictly to cash or checks.

"We do not accept bones or catnip," Ballin said.